I have to just say that today has gone straight down the crapper. I mean....... wow.  I know that the right thing to do is not give the person (whom we think we know) the satisfaction of knowing they are affecting us.  Having said that, I think we all know that this has added a tremendous about of strain to our lives.  For the record, Lizze and I are complete disasters right now.  Let me be very clear. I'm not afraid of what will come of this because we have nothing to hide. However, it does shake our trust because this was very likely someone that we know.  The boys are at their grandparents so Lizze and I could process this without stressing them out. Lizze is a walking panic…

It's not too often that I feel the need to really address something that has happened to my family,  in the form of an open letter. This is one such occasion. My hope is that by sharing this openly, we can all learn a valuable lesson. A couple of hours ago, child protective services showed up at our door.  Apparently someone lodged a complaint this morning and they have launched an investigation. That's my understanding. I spoke with two social workers from Stark County Children Services Division, while standing on my front porch. They explained that it had been reported that we are not seeking proper medical care for our children. They also said that we have been accused of not taking them to their follow up appointments as well.…

Do you remember last week, when the boys went to the Akron Aeros baseball game with their class and my Dad? Apparently, Gavin's teacher had the kids create a pennant that expressed their individuality and theme it to baseball.  I hadn't even seen this until yesterday morning.  I brought this up to Gavin's teacher at the wraparound meeting yesterday and she explained what the pennant was all about.  Gavin created a team called the Summit Academy Hedgehogs. We were talking about this yesterday and it was really cute because in all the excitement of the game, it hadn't occurred to his teacher what had inspired this masterpiece.  It just clicked yesterday and I'm wondering if anyone else can share with me what they think is the inspiration behind this pennant. …

Emmett was really uncomfortable yesterday when nothing in the house was working, due to the lack of electricity. My kids sorta perseverate of things and become anxious. When this began to happen, the only thing I could do was attempt to distract or redirect him.  Redirection is something that many parenting have to employ from time to time. It simply means that you try to pull their attention away from one thing and get them to focus it elsewhere. With kids on the Autism spectrum, that is very, very often easier said than done.  Emmett can sometimes be difficult to distract or redirect because he also has a very stubborn streak in him as well.  Cough cough.... He gets that from Lizze.... Cough cough  :O Anyway, he was successfully redirected…

It's 3am and I'm sitting in bed unable to sleep. Yesterday was just so completely draining that I fell asleep pretty early.  I wanted to update everyone as to how we're doing.  Late yesterday afternoon, we had our power (electric) restored, thanks to the overwhelming outpouring  of support, from an amazingly kind and generous community. I'm truly humbled and at a loss for words. Most of the day yesterday, I was without Internet. Having no power complicates many, many things. Also, Tmobile, still has us kicked to 2G while they update their towers to LTE.  For those of you familiar with the limitations of 2G data connections, you know it's pretty bad. Anyways, after the power was restored, we had some issues with our internet in the house and it…

For those of you unaware of the amount of medically and psychologically necessary medications, I thought I would share this little tidbit with you. I'm not going to focus on the names in this post because I'm just looking to illustrate something else. Gavin's on at minimum, 17 pills a day. What you see below is a picture of his morning mess only.  Believe it or not, this is significantly less than what it used to be.  We have been able to safely remove several medications over the last few years. His doctors have said that we have removed everything that is possible to remove, at least at this time.  What's left is longterm medications that he simply couldn't function without. Several of the pills you see are related to…

Update: As of late yesterday afternoon, our power was restored. Thank you so much for your unbelievable everything. Please see my Official Update or more information. We had a really, really interesting wraparound meeting this morning. The long and short of it is this. Lizze is in crisis and we have to attend to her needs.  Gavin has to be home or its pointless to make all these trips to the doctors because we can't provide accurate information about how he's doing.  The meeting was ending and one of the people asked a question that could only be answered honestly by revealing just how bad things are for us right now.  I had assumed that they knew this stuff as they have read this blog before.  Apparently they didn't.  I…